Sins of the Father
by SerenLyall
Summary: Leia's first encounter with Anakin was nothing like the fairy tales say it should be. When a princess meets her long-lost father for the first time, you see, there are hugs and tears of joy, and promises of "I'll never leave you again," and "I love you." But this is no fairy tale, and forgiveness does not come so easily as the stories say.


**Disclaimer:** The Star Wars universe, the characters Anakin, Leia, and Luke, and all other recognizable names and objects referenced herein belong to George Lucas, Disney, and their respective owners. No profit was made from the writing of this.

**Rating/Warnings:** Teen; mild language, mentions of torture, a line that could be interpreted as an ambiguous reference to rape (though that is not my personal interpretation).

**Time frame:** post-RotJ (two or three years maybe?)

**Notes:**This is _not_ EU-compliant. I wanted to take the idea and explore it myself - and truth be told, I'm not entirely happy with how it was all handled in the EU.

At the moment, this is a stand-alone piece, though there is a possibility of a sequel (or, perhaps, even of a short series. I'm not really sure yet). The writing of further sequels will largely depend on what inspiration I find, as well as reader response to this - if there's enough reader interest for a sequel, there's a much higher likelihood that I'll be inspired to write more. (That wasn't an attempt at a bribe. Really.) She shall see.

Lastly, I hope you enjoy!

***EDITED* 1/17/2015**

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**_Sins of the Father_**

The first time she feels the soft nudge, Leia brushes it off with hardly a second thought. She has always been good at blocking out the strange tugs at her thoughts, and even better at ignoring the strange, prickling sensation, like an invisible breath of air rippling across her skin. (She'd had to be—had been trained to be since she could talk, though at the time she hadn't known just what her father meant when he would tell her, _"Your thoughts are your own, Leia. No one can take them from you if you don't want them to—if you don't allow them to." _She hadn't known then that no one else had a steel and mortar wall built around their minds, protecting their thoughts and emotions, guarding their very _selves._) Even now—even after the danger of (_her father_) Darth Vader discovering the truth of her identity, after the peril of the Emperor realizing that she was far more than a gifted orator and politician like her Father (Bail. Her Father was Bail Organa, and no blood or genetics would ever change that)—it was still as natural as breathing for her to casually deflect a wayward probe or fluctuation within the Force.

The second time she feels the cool, pointed nudge, Leia frowns, and takes a moment from her reading to feel the taint of _personality _beneath the movement. It is a nebulous, ambiguous sort of sense, a little like trying to feel water or taste air, and even more surreal than either. It is one of the few Jedi skills Leia has cared to actually practice. Now that she knows just what it was, Leia decided it would be beneficial to have the ability to sense just who it was attempting to read her thoughts. (Though there are very few people now who would dare try such a thing—who _could_try such a thing. Save, of course, for Luke. But his presence, in her thoughts and in her emotions, she had known and understood even before she had understood her own.)

Leia's gaze slides out of focus, the words on the datapad in her hands blurring as she turns her attention inward. She feels along the twisting tendrils of the Force as they eddy around her, seeking out the disturbance that distracted her. She finds it easily enough—a bright, shimmering point of liquid blue—and she gently pokes at it. The bright spot shifts, twists, and then begins to bleed away, leaving only the natural flow of invisible energy in its wake.

Sighing, Leia returns her attention to the files she was reading. The will to learn she may have, but her chances to practice honing her skills are few and far between, leaving her still woefully inexperienced in moments (like this) where she actually needs her gift.

The third nudge—though this time it is more of a poke—takes Leia by surprise. Her eyes snap up from the datapad (as if she might actually be able to see the cause of her aggravation standing before her), and scowls.

_Sand, golden and brilliant and _hot_, and the dazzling, blinding blue of a desert sun._

The sensation slams into Leia like a wall of durasteel (_"Why can I never do this when I try?"_ she seethes, in the split second between recognition and understanding), and then it feels as if the breath is driven from her lungs with an invisible punch. In that instant, she knows, _knows _what (_who_) is behind the prodding.

He feels too much like Luke to be anyone else.

The force with which she smashes away the next nudge takes even Leia by surprise.

_Go away,_ she thinks fiercely, lips curling back in a pointless, silent snarl. _I don't want you here._

Another nudge, this time more focused, more insistent.

_I said no._

Poke.

_Kriffing hells, I said NO._

One final, almost painful (_almost_, she would tell Luke later, grudgingly, as if she had wished it _had _hurt) prod.

"What?!" The word explodes from her, climbing up from her pounding heart and tearing free of her anger.

A shimmering figure appears very suddenly in the space before her desk, blond hair flopping untidily across his forehead and into his eyes, a smirk twisting up his lips.

"Hello, Leia." His voice was far, far softer than Leia had expected.

And suddenly, she isn't sure it is a smirk. (Maybe it was a smile. A gentle, happy sort of smile—the kind she had seen her father wear sometimes when he would look at her… With the savageness of a tempest, Leia locks that thought deep, deep down in a box of ice and iron, where even she can neither see nor feel it.)

"What do you want?" Leia asks from between gritted teeth, her voice only barely what could be considered civil. Like metal grating on metal.

"I wanted to…talk," Anakin says after a silent moment.

"You didn't have to be quite so rude about asking," Leia snaps.

Anakin quirks an eyebrow. "No? You've been ignoring every other method I've tried."

Leia's eyes narrow, lips white and thin, her jaw clenching so tight she knows it should hurt (knows it _will_ hurt, later, after the fury racing in her veins and blazing in her blood has sizzled away, leaving her feeling empty and hollow and cold).

"Has it crossed your mind that perhaps I do not _want _to talk to you?" Leia asks, all ice and blade and spitting venom.

"Nonetheless, we need to speak."

"There is nothing I have to say to you," Leia bites. "Now get out."

"Leia." His voice is low, carrying the faintest undertone of warning.

"What?" she asks. Her eyes snap with defiance, the fury she is so accustomed to wearing like a veil when facing (her father?) this beast falling easily into place. She had not been cowed by him as Darth Vader, she will not allow him to do so now as Anakin.

And now he does grin—wild and almost feral—and his blue eyes flash in a way Luke's never have (and never will). "Are you afraid?" he asks, almost gently. His tone is in such utter contrast to his smile that it takes Leia a full second to process what he said.

It grates. It burns, like acid on her skin. It feels too much like sympathy—and sympathy is not a thing that Anakin is allowed. "No," she spits, "I am not afraid. Not of you."

"Then why won't you speak with me?"

"Because I have nothing to _say_ to you," Leia retorts.

Anakin raises both of his eyebrows. "I think we both know that's not true." And though his voice is soft once more, it lacks the rippling undercurrent of sympathy that had pricked at Leia's pride. Now it is simply…quiet. Quiet, and layered with emotion that Leia cannot quite seem to name.

Leia is silent for a breath. A second breath. "You're right," she says coldly. "Fine. Let's talk."

_So much anger, even in your voice._ Anakin's thought is sudden and unexpectedly clear, ringing in her thoughts as much as in her heart, echoing from a silent place in her mind that, until that moment, she hadn't even known existed. Then, "Do you really hate me so much?"

"Yes." The question is so easy to answer, it burns.

Silence.

Leia looks back up to see Anakin still standing there. Even the smile is gone now, though, replaced instead with a haunting look of—of what? Sorrow? Pain? Remorse?

"Did you really expect me to forgive you so easily?" Leia asks. Her voice rises in pitch, in disbelief. "You? After all that you've done?"

"It wasn't me," Anakin says, his tone matching hers—quiet, low, and filled with an undercurrent of swirling emotion. "Leia, please…"

And Leia laughs, abrasive and loud and full of crystal disbelief. "Not you?" she scoffs. "Then it wasn't you who ordered the droid into my cell? Wasn't you who invaded my thoughts, who tried to break my mind? Wasn't you who made me believe that I was burning; that I was being flayed alive, the skin peeled inch by inch from my bones as I screamed in agony? Wasn't you who made it so I will always remember lying bleeding and broken and empty on the cold floor, men laughing as-" She chokes on her words, memories of darkness and terror and agony rising in her mind and in her throat like bile.

She chances a glance up at (her _father_) Anakin. Somehow, the sick and horrified look on his face, filling his eyes with loathing and disgust and anger (_At himself_, Leia realizes dimly, _all at himself_) does not give her the same sense of satisfaction she had expected.

She truly snarls now, low and hateful. _Damn you to every hell_, she shrieks at him silently, at that hateful place in her mind where Anakin flickers, pouring every ounce of anger and hatred and loathing (and fear and terror and horror and, hidden somewhere dark and treacherous in the very depths of her heart where she would never have to think about it, would never have to feel it: betrayal. Betrayal, by (_her_ father) the man who had sacrificed everything to save a son who had nearly killed him, but who had destroyed a daughter without a thought, without a question, without even a hesitation, for nothing more than a name.)

"Leia," Anakin begins, voice breaking, as if he is on the verge of tears. "Leia, please, I didn't-"

"Didn't know?" Leia cuts him off, voice rising shrill and piercing, full of anger and incense. "Of course you didn't _know_," she spits. "Because Bail Organa, _my father_," she stresses the words, pretends not to see the flicker of a flinch spasm across Anakin's face as if he had been physically slapped, "protected me. Hid me. From _you_. And for good reason," she adds with a scathing sneer.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath.

When Leia continues, her voice is suddenly calm, eerily so, as if every last trace of her anger (_her pain_) has been leeched from her words, leaving behind only cool, calm hatred in its wake. "Don't forget who it was that held me back," she tells (her father) the man standing before her. "Don't forget who it was that forced me to watch as Alderaan-" (_My home, my beautiful, peaceful home_) "-was blown to a hundred million fragments of rock and dust." Her heart thuds painfully in her breast, filling her ears with the echoing fury of a pounding drum, leaving her trembling and cold and aching all at once.

Anakin's eyes fall to the ground beneath his feet. "I'm sorry," he whispers at last, so quietly that Leia nearly can't hear him over the steady pulse of anger (of _agony_) beating in time with the drum of her heart. "I'm sorry, Leia," Anakin repeats, and his gaze flickers up to meet hers. "Please…"

"Please what?" Leia hisses, some heat returning to her voice, eyes narrowed into slits (so she wouldn't show (_her father_) this man that she was seconds away from weeping). "Forgive you?" she asks, incredulous. "I can't do that."

"I suppose you're right," Anakin says quietly. "I don't…I don't blame you." And there is such anguish, such heartache in his voice that, for an instant, Leia almost (_almost_) hesitates. Almost draws back. Almost cares for the hurt that she was dealing him.

But doing so would be forgiving him (wouldn't it?)—would be accepting his apology, his sorrow. And she can't do that. Not now. Not today.

(_Today_ _does not mean never._)

Perhaps not ever.

She is silent.

"Leia?" She looks at him. (_Her father_.) He meets her gaze squarely, and he does not shrink away from the anger (_or the pain_) he sees in her eyes. "Leia, I am sorry," he says softly. And his voice, little more than a whisper, breaks. "I am so very, very sorry. I only hope…" Leia lifs her eyebrows, silently challenging him to finish his sentence, her breath still in her chest. "…I only hope that one day I can prove that to you. That I can show you that there is good in me—that I am no longer the monster that tortured you and hurt you in so many ways. I hope that one day, you can forgive me."

(_One day…)_

"I doubt it."

Anakin bows his head, quietly accepting her words. "I will leave you to your reading, then," he says. "Farewell, Leia. I lo-" He stops himself, swallowing what he had been about to say. Sighs. Closes his eyes. "I hope I will see you again," he says instead.

And then, just like that, the ghost of Anakin is gone, vanishing into the nothingness before Leia's desk, leaving only the faint scent of sand and blue sky.

And Leia, the datapad long forgotten on the table by her elbow, buries her face in her hands and finally lets the tears spill over.

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**End notes:** Thoughts? Comments? Constructive criticism? Wanting more? I'd love to hear from you, even if it's simply an anonymous "I liked it." Most importantly, though, I hope you enjoyed. ~Seren


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